Saturday, November 28, 2009

"Did you ever...? (Restaurants)

Did you ever…?by Melech

Did you ever wonder why some people decide to work as waiters or waitresses? I do almost every time I go into a restaurant. The vast majority of waiters and waitresses I have encountered have been exceptionally good at their job and have truly excellent personalities. There are, however, those few who make you wonder why they bothered getting out of bed that day. They always appear to be angry, impatient and in a hurry to go home, even when their shift just started twenty minutes ago.

The last time I went to a restaurant for dinner, the waitress asked if I was ready to order. I hadn’t even sat down yet. When I asked her if I could please have a menu, she rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh of impatience that could have filled a dirigible.

Twenty minutes later, she brought a menu and didn’t reappear for another half-hour to take my order. I asked for a steak, very well done. When she brought the steak, it was swimming in a pool of blood, and I was almost sure I detected a heartbeat. The steak wasn’t pink inside; it was red. I told the waitress I couldn’t eat that. “What’s the matter with it?” she snapped. “Well,” I replied, “I made a promise to myself that I would never bite into anything I had to apologise to.”The fourth time she brought the steak back from the kitchen it was still rare, so I just asked for the check.“Do you want this wrapped up to take with you?” she asked.“No,” I said, “Just call the paramedics. Maybe with CPR it could still live.”As I was leaving the restaurant, I noticed several buzzards circling around. I guess they knew the steak wasn’t going to survive.

Just then, I saw my friend Bing going into the same restaurant. I told him about my experience there and warned him against it but he wouldn’t take my advice. The last I heard of Bing, he was in the witness protection program and living somewhere in the Middle East under an assumed name. A week later, that waitress won the local “Miss Congeniality Contest” and was now considering a career in public relations.

As a last resort, and because I was still hungry, I decided to order from a fast food drive-up. I was shouting my order into the speaker when my sister and her husband drove up next to me and asked why I was trying to order food at a pharmacy drive-up window. I pretended I didn’t hear them and I drove away.

When I got home, I put two hot dogs in the broiler and burnt them to honour the memory of the steak that didn’t survive. I looked in the refrigerator to see if there was anything else to eat, but nothing appealed to me. Probably because I had also promised myself that I wouldn’t eat any food that appeared in the colour blue, or moved when you touched it.The box of cereal in the cabinet had an expiration date of four years ago, and I was afraid to open the refrigerator again because the milk looked angry.Maybe I should take my sister’s advice and learn how to cook.